State of the NAS: private clouds and an app platform

The current breed of NAS will share files with your tablet and host Wordpress.

With a little time and energy, it's possible to put together the right combination of hardware and software to provide a great SOHO server. For those without the inclination, though, a NAS box can provide a great alternative. NAS makers have done the hard work of building compact, energy efficient hardware, and putting an interface between you and the operating system that makes configuring the server a relative snap.

A few years back, the low-end consumer hardware would do little more than ensure that the shared storage space would be visible on the local network. If you wanted more sophisticated software, you had to pay to step up to business-class hardware. While some companies are still selling simple, stripped down network storage (Drobos and Apple's TimeCapsule are the primary examples), in general, this is no longer true. Several companies now offer NAS firmware that behaves identically across their entire product line, from single-drive home backup systems to high-end rack-mounted hardware.

Just as significantly, the firmware that many companies are offering is now extensible. Most NAS boxes are Linux systems, and it's often been possible to ssh in and install software on them. But several companies are currently offering something that looks suspiciously like an app store, where NAS users can do one-click installs of additional features.

More power, more ports

One of the key enablers of the expanded functions of NAS products has been the large rise in processing power of the low-cost processors that run them. Thanks in part to the booms in smartphones and tablets, the current generation of ARM processors is quite a bit more potent than anything available just a few years back. And, to compete, Intel has developed the Atom platform; embedded versions of Atom now power a lot of the current hardware.

Obviously, the extra processing power, coupled with incredibly cheap RAM, has given the hardware the ability to do a lot more—it can run more services at once, and actually engage in a bit of computing, if needed.

That processing power has been accompanied by better options for interacting with other hardware. The ubiquity of gigabit Ethernet has been a real boon. On a reasonably configured network, GigE will be faster than just about any external drive option, making a NAS an appealing option for large backups. It also means that handling more than one stream of content at a time won't be crippling.

Adding additional ports has turned out to be cheap and easy, so most companies have done it. Many NAS units now have eSATA ports to expand their pool of high speed storage. And just about all of them have USB ports. These can be used for adding storage, but they can also add some significant features—printer sharing and transferring images from cameras are among the most common, but software can add some useful features.

For example, some of Synology's hardware includes a button that, when pressed, triggers the hardware to search its external storage for photos, which it will copy into a directory dedicated to sharing images. If you've got a USB reader for SD or CF cards, getting your images off your camera and safely archived is a snap, with any intervention from the computer completely optional.

A mix of custom and commodity

That sort of behavior requires careful hardware/software integration, but for the most part, extreme customization like that is pretty rare. Just about all NAS systems have standardized on some form of Linux and, as a result, there's a certain set of features you can count on finding in just about any NAS system. Some of these can be hugely convenient, like printer sharing or a built-in server that turns your music folder into an iTunes-compatible network source. Even firmware that takes the most minimalist approach to things, like Netgear's, offers that.

Many of them also offer features that will only appeal to a subset of users. For example, a few companies bundle a bit torrent client, which allows you to start a download that's handled by your NAS. Put your computer to sleep, and the file should be waiting for it the next time it wakes up. Just about all companies offer integration with UPS power backup systems. Most of them also offer the option of duplicating everything on the system to an off-site rsync server, providing an additional level of backup (or a useful bit of mirroring for remote offices).

But there's plenty of space for customization. Netgear and Synology, for example, offer software that turns their NAS boxes into something closer to a Drobo, where you can add disks of any size and the system will simply maximize the storage while still protecting the data it hosts. Iomega's hardware has folders where, after you place an image there, the system will automatically upload it to Facebook or Flickr. Synology seems to view their systems as complete solutions, equipping them with mail servers, firewalls, and even a PPPoE client.

Enlarge/ Synology's browser-based configuration pages behave more like an OS.

Because of all this complexity, though, the quality of their web-based interfaces that let you manage all these options is critical. Netgear and some others keep it fairly simple only because they don't quite offer as many services in the default firmware. Iomega provides lots of options, but attempts to break them down into manageable groups, and provides links so you can skip among the settings to other relevant ones. QNAP uses a coverflow-like approach to navigating its settings. Synology has done its best to make it look like its hardware is running an entire OS within the browser window, complete with a control panel and several other widgets that behave like applications. It's an impressive bit of web programming.

A platform for other apps

Since these machines run Linux, the underlying platform is open sourced, meaning that you can, in theory, port software to run on these machines. A few of the companies, however, go much further, offering an official SDK and providing places to save the software that won't be blow away by every firmware upgrade. If you don't have that level of technical prowess, however, then you used to be out of luck.

But for a few platforms, that's starting to change, in that you're no longer limited to just the software that comes bundled with your firmware. Synology, for example, offers a large collections of applications for download directly from within the firmware. The installation is simple, and the software for configuring it is integrated into the rest of the firmware.

Enlarge/ Some of the many packages you can install on a Synology device.

Iomega is taking what you might view as the Nook approach to matters. For that platform, Barnes & Noble identified a set of developers that it wanted on its platform, and worked with them to make sure the apps behaved well and were easily available to its users. The first example of this in Iomega's artillery is software from SecureMind, a security and monitoring company that makes Windows software and allows fine-tuned control over the capture and storage of security camera footage. Their software now works on Iomega's NAS boxes, archiving the footage to local storage. Users can choose to use Iomega's built in software but, if that doesn't meet their needs, they can opt to step up to the full commercial package, and add licenses for more cameras as needed.

By its nature, NAS hardware will never end up going the way of a general computing app platform like a tablet, but it wouldn't shock me if some manufacturers started offering what Synology is: the equivalent of an app store, where developers can place server-focused software that the manufacturer doesn't feel the need to provide.

Always on, always available

Some of this additional software, like a WordPress installation, isn't especially useful unless someone can find your server. Fortunately, the NAS makers have this covered too. Most of the manufacturers support some dynamic DNS redirection in software, and QNAP and Synology have their own services. Simply set your account info in the NAS preferences, and the box will make sure your address is kept up to date.

For most users, the hardware remains behind a router, which means a (potentially complicated) port forwarding setup, to make sure traffic from the outside world only ends up at the NAS. Synology and QNAP do this one better: for a variety of router hardware, you can simply identify the device in the NAS firmware, enter your password, and it will communicate with it, opening up whatever ports are needed to make the services accessible. Synology's also got a clever setup where each device produces a unique ID that it hands to a service running on the company's servers. Simply plug that ID number into its mobile apps, and the device will be redirected to your NAS. (Almost everybody is now offering mobile apps that play nicely with their servers.)

This is great if you want to run a web or FTP server, and it can even let you access file shares if you open the right ports. But several manufacturers are now moving towards what they term a "personal cloud." This isn't a cloud in the sense of lots of servers that will host redundant copies of the data being stored; instead it's a cloud in the sense that it provides always-available storage space. In this case, the disk space is on the NAS, but software streamlines let you access it from anywhere, and can make files accessible through a Web interface.

Essentially, the device manufacturer runs a server that any NAS can be set to connect to, providing it with its current IP address. You then can request the company connect you from your laptop while on the road. The web service then hands you off to the NAS; none of the traffic goes through the company's servers. This service is offered by Iomega, QNAP, Synology, Western Digital, and probably others. Synology also has Mac and Windows clients that turns your NAS into something resembling Dropbox.

Enlarge/ Want to integrate your NAS with other cloud services? Iomega has you covered.

There are some other interesting twists. Iomega is now part of EMC, making them a corporate cousin of the Mozy cloud backup service. This offers users a pretty interesting alternative to the (sometimes glacial) process of backing up a brimming hard drive to the service. You can now back it up (quickly) to the NAS while you're on the local network, and then have the NAS handle the slow process of getting all that information onto the cloud server.

Managing complexity

Pretty much every device manufacturer has now put together a rich set of offerings that run on their platforms. And, they've made it progressively easier to take advantage of these options, even when you're not sitting on the same network the hardware resides on.

The main challenge is that all these options add a degree of complexity to managing things, some on the NAS itself, and some in terms of integrating it with your router, software, etc. Finding the software and firmware with the right balance for you is probably more important than picking your hardware. Of the ones we've tried, we're partial to Synology's firmware (some of us exceedingly fond) because of its huge range of capabilities and frequent updates that add even more. But if you can, try a few

Cisco is trying the same thing with its new wireless routers. Tonido also has an app platform (http://www.tonido.com/applications.html) for its single bay NAS TonidoPlug and its personal cloud software.

Does Synology have easy support for syncing to cloud backups? I was very interested by CrashPlan, but with multiple family machines I've decided to go the route of just getting up a big Synology NAS drive for shared backup and putting it somewhere (hopefully) fire proof since we have an external solid brick shed that should suffice (since it's nice and dry).

If it can back-up to CrashPlan as well then that'd be even better, and I could just keep it indoors instead. It's maybe a bit paranoid, but I'd have triple redundancy since each machine has its own files, an external drive to backup to, then the NAS to backup to as well. With an encrypted cloud backup as well that'd be quadruple redundancy, overkill perhaps, but I've been stung by poor backups before

Does Synology have easy support for syncing to cloud backups? I was very interested by CrashPlan, but with multiple family machines I've decided to go the route of just getting up a big Synology NAS drive for shared backup and putting it somewhere (hopefully) fire proof since we have an external solid brick shed that should suffice (since it's nice and dry).

If it can back-up to CrashPlan as well then that'd be even better, and I could just keep it indoors instead. It's maybe a bit paranoid, but I'd have triple redundancy since each machine has its own files, an external drive to backup to, then the NAS to backup to as well. With an encrypted cloud backup as well that'd be quadruple redundancy, overkill perhaps, but I've been stung by poor backups before

There's an unofficial way of installing Crashplan onto a Synology NAS and running it as a headless back-up system.

One of the commenters (if not in that article than another one) said when they contacted Crashplan about a fully supported version via the Synology package manager they made mention of the fact it was something they were working on for a future release down the road.

Take that completely unverified comment for what you will. But even without official support, there is a way to install Crashplan onto the NAS.

I've been considering network storage for our home, and this article has been very helpful. I'll end up getting one of Synology's lower-end NAS (DS212j) and a couple Western Digital Red drives. That should be plenty of storage for our needs, and much easier than messing with Windows' Home Groups.

I used to have a NAS using Windows Home Server OG. The great thing about that was that I could repurpose old hardware laying around. As I continue to upgrade my equipment, and find I more and more going mobile. Laptops/Tablets replacing my desktop, but for me there are some things that a desktop is the only thing that will work. (ie encoding blurays)

Having a NAS, router, desktop, a pair of laptops, Xbox, DVR, Nooks, etc. I find that I just want things to be simpler. And NO wires, my house is a mess. The girlfriend is not a fan, and neither am I on the clutter.

I would suggest an article on setting up Windows 8 as a NAS. I have been doing this for the past 8 months. iCore 5 with 8GB ram, SSD primary, 4 WD 2TB green drives on a miniITX board and case. It's tiny, and uses very little power. It's headless, I use a DDNS and use Remote desktop anywhere I want. Very fast on the local network, I can rip blurays remotely and extremely fast thanks to the i5. uTorrent on it, never slows down. Multiple hard drives with different capacities not a problem for win8 with redundancy. Can backup all my laptops to it with the built in backup in windows. One really nice feature is that I use sync center to keep all mine and my girls pictures, videos, docs, and especially music synced. One of us adds some new music, I get it synced instantly across all device. (skydrive for somethings as well). Windows phone backups to the NAS, iPhone and Android have apps coming for that as well, thanks to MS. Crashplan installed to the NAS and backs up everything to the clouds under 1 account, I can have unlimited laptops backing up to 1 machine. Crashplan has an app for iphone, android and wp that allows you to get all your files from the clouds.

The killer reason for me to do this is that I can have full blown Media Center on the NAS. I got rid of the DVR (time warner crap) have more storage anyway and run a full blown Ceton quad tuner card in the NAS. My girl has DirecTV (still under contract), so I got a Hauppauge external USB HD PVR and plugged it into the NAS. I have cable and DirecTV through out the house. (for kicks I got a usb ATSC tuner and hooked up the antenna, 6 tuners at once, what can I say I like my football) I run it all through the Xbox seamlessly and wirelessly.

You can add any program you want to the pc, everything is in the clouds thanks to crashplan and skydrive. I am working on replacing the router. I have ordered a second wireless nic, I have a Centrino on minipcix on motherboard. Intel has a wireless hotspot for the card that I can set to 5ghz, and I'm going to see if I can use connectify for the second card 2.4ghz 300mb just for the Xboxes. Software firewalls are better and you can setup Snort, and all kinds of security software on the NAS that would be impossible for a router.

Everytime I've gone with a proprietary solution, I've been bitten by unexpected limitations or costs. Now I'm running a full Windows PC, and adding software servers on it as I need them.

It's not that much more expensive, it's a lot more flexible and versatile, and above all future proof.

The one worry I have is about security, but I haven't been bitten yet, and I'm making extra sure I have a true backup (offline, offsite, and tested... I gave up on *multiple* though when I reached several TBs of data ^^)

I just want a huge hard drive sitting on my network at home that I can access anywhere (and give access to my friends) without paying monthly fees. It seems like the only option for me is PogoPlug and that seems iffy at best.

I just want a huge hard drive sitting on my network at home that I can access anywhere (and give access to my friends) without paying monthly fees. It seems like the only option for me is PogoPlug and that seems iffy at best.

I just want a huge hard drive sitting on my network at home that I can access anywhere (and give access to my friends) without paying monthly fees. It seems like the only option for me is PogoPlug and that seems iffy at best.

How so?

PogoPlug reviews are very polarized. It seems the software is not quite good.

I just want a huge hard drive sitting on my network at home that I can access anywhere (and give access to my friends) without paying monthly fees. It seems like the only option for me is PogoPlug and that seems iffy at best.

How so?

PogoPlug reviews are very polarized. It seems the software is not quite good.

I just want a huge hard drive sitting on my network at home that I can access anywhere (and give access to my friends) without paying monthly fees. It seems like the only option for me is PogoPlug and that seems iffy at best.

Windows Home Server is great for that, very cheap too. I currently have v1 of WHS, but eventually when I plan on upgrading I'm more than likely will build a Linux based server/NAS.

You can access it from anywhere and it's free, there are many options out there.

Thanks! I'll check that out; I did have CrashPlan installed as a trial on the machines, but having all four machines syncing individually became a huge annoyance, and a pain to manage. Offloading that to the NAS ought to be much easier!

One thing actually that the article doesn't cover is how much your typical NAS can handle. One of the main reasons I was interested in a Synology NAS is that I know it can also have squid cache installed on it, which could be useful, plus I've seen guides for setting up a jabber server, and if I remember right an ad-blocking proxy. But obviously all four together could start bogging things down quite a bit, depending upon the exact hardware I suppose. The easier they make it to install these things, the more likely it is you can end up with a super speedy NAS that performs horribly

I just want a huge hard drive sitting on my network at home that I can access anywhere (and give access to my friends) without paying monthly fees. It seems like the only option for me is PogoPlug and that seems iffy at best.

You can do it for free.Step 1: install a free FTP server on your computer of choiceStep 2: setup port forwarding in your home router so your ftp server is reachable from the InternetStep 3: get a dynamic DNS account at www.dyndns.orgStep 4: ftp://ironman3.dyndns.org/

So, being a Linux novice, is there any sort of service I can install on a regular RH or Ubuntu install to give me a comprehensive web-based (or local UI) management interface like all these have? I like to run a few other things that a freenas doesn't easily lend itself to installing/running.

FreeNAS is a decent platform for doing this, save any video encoding mentioned by another post. for 213 bucks including shipping I built a base for my FreeNAS machine using a foxconn D250S, 4GB of ram, a rosewill case, + a 1TB Seagate el-cheapo 5900RPM drive. I already had 4 external 1 TB drives so the total available storage (raw) is 5TB, but I configure raid 5 for ZFS incase on of the drives takes a dump. We use a combination of Windows / Apple machines..I've got 2 MBPros, 2 regular Win7 laptops, 2 netbooks, and 2 desktops. Mainly this device is our backup server and central hub for our music / video files, which eat up some space now with 1080P recording becoming common. The speed of the device is quite admirable, it has a Gbit ethernet uplink, and the desktops are able to push about 700Mbit peak to it, with an average of about 450. Supports AFP + native TimeMachine backups so our Mac's are covered, and has no problem streaming 2 or more 1080P videos over our wireless when in range of the 5ghz 802.11n (We MAINLY use our apple laptops, and they wont do 40mhz wide channels on 2.4ghz, because it frankly is rude to your neighbors)Wireless saturation maxes at around 190Mbit for any one station, and if both do a backup at once it can go as high as 210 between the two of them (again, 5ghz N @ MCS15 (300Mbit), using a ruckus 7962 AP (got that for free on a demo, not about to spend 1K for a home AP))All of that said, people who know what they are doing with technology and have the desire to do so have been doing this "cloud" stuff for about a decade. This is my 3rd purpose built device for this same function, the first one was a Pentium 75mhz old Packard Bell I found in a dumpster in 99, and used it to host my 590MB of quake 2 "wadasia" maps + q2 server for lan parties. I've also build several mediacenter like devices, all of which use free software. Bottom line, here we are over a decade later, and what geeks have been doing for years is now turning in to a market.

So, being a Linux novice, is there any sort of service I can install on a regular RH or Ubuntu install to give me a comprehensive web-based (or local UI) management interface like all these have? I like to run a few other things that a freenas doesn't easily lend itself to installing/running.

It's not a "web-enabled" answer, but why not use VNC? You can VNC from your desktop to your server, and better than a web interface... you get the whole desktop of the server (assuming you are running a desktop on the server).

That's how I am planning on setting up my NAS in the next couple weeks. It will be in the basement, and I will VNC onto it from my main Windows box when I need to do things.

Can anyone comment on the relative levels of security of a personal cloud vs using a commercial offering e.g. Dropbox, Spideroak etc. Punter level advice required:-)

I assume basics e.g. that you will frequently patch software. In my case I like to tinker, and try to google/read up on things before setting them up, but it seems like companies like Dropbox will spend significant time and money on security. Yes, I know they have been hacked a few times, but in theory they should be more secure? As an example I setup a VPN on a VPS recently. I assumed that SSH was secure, but it turns out there are different versions, not all secure, and multiple ways to secure SSH, changing ports being a bit of a bodge but mentioned a lot, using connection attempt limits via IPtables being a lot better was only mentioned in a few places. If I just just gone with defaults and/or installed an app, as a punter I would have missed this.

Are the personal cloud app providers such as Synology doing this for me, or do I need to get my hands dirty at the terminal, encrypting shares or other security measures if I want my personal cloud to be secure?

Everytime I've gone with a proprietary solution, I've been bitten by unexpected limitations or costs. Now I'm running a full Windows PC, and adding software servers on it as I need them.

This.Once your NAS is so complex that it can do most of the things a full PC can do, then why bother ? Just use a full PC ! It can do anything you want it to.

obarthelemy wrote:

It's not that much more expensive, it's a lot more flexible and versatile, and above all future proof.

It's significantly cheaper to go the pc route - you can build a great PC in a Mini-ITX case for a few hundred dollars. Add on a hundred bucks for a Windows 8 OEM licence, or zero bucks for a Linux instal, and voila. You can choose exactly how many drive bays you want, etc. etc. Now that the budget Ivy Bridge CPUs have arrived - http://www.anandtech.com/show/6249/inte ... pus-arrive - there isn't even any noticeable power saving from the dedicated NAS...

I just want a huge hard drive sitting on my network at home that I can access anywhere (and give access to my friends) without paying monthly fees. It seems like the only option for me is PogoPlug and that seems iffy at best.

You can do it for free.Step 1: install a free FTP server on your computer of choiceStep 2: setup port forwarding in your home router so your ftp server is reachable from the InternetStep 3: get a dynamic DNS account at http://www.dyndns.orgStep 4: ftp://ironman3.dyndns.org/

late to the party, I know, but just to set the record straight for anyone that wanders into this thread later on: dyndns.org killed off their free dynamic DNS service some time ago. It's still free for anyone that already had an account before they threw the switch, but new sign-ups have to pay.

There are a bunch of free alternatives, but I've never used any of them. Sorry.

late to the party, I know, but just to set the record straight for anyone that wanders into this thread later on: dyndns.org killed off their free dynamic DNS service some time ago. It's still free for anyone that already had an account before they threw the switch, but new sign-ups have to pay.

After the 14 day trial, you will be charged our low yearly fee of just $20 a year (or sign up for five years and get 10% off!) to keep your DynDNS Pro service. Only valid major credit cards (not PayPal) are accepted for DynDNS Pro trials.

Decide you no longer want the DynDNS Pro trial? Just cancel your DynDNS Pro trial within 14 days and you will not be charged. You may keep one hostname free of charge for trying out the DynDNS Pro trial.